HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel will spend the upcoming months covering several Georgetown basketball home games, with (hopefully) a very special reward coming in March. However, since the A-10 was kind enough to hold its media day just a few blocks from his apartment on Monday, he was in attendance at the Westin for press conferences with a player/coach from every team. See below for some Q&A from the afternoon session, and if you missed his coverage from the morning session then you can find it at: https://hoopshd.com/2026/10/19/all-access-at-a-10-media-day-in-dc-morning-session
Since there were not individual breakout rooms for media members like myself, I spent the day trying to squeeze in 1 question at all the press conferences. Rhode Island coach Archie Miller has a birthday coming up later this month so I hoped he would share his plans for the big day. He said he did not even know when his birthday was but hoped that SR G Jahmere Tripp has it on his calendar and will “get me a cupcake or something”.
Rhode Island women’s coach Colleen Mullen’s 1st game as the new head coach of the Rams will mark 9,741 days since her final game as a player in Kingston on March 3, 2000, so I decided to see what her emotions were like as she prepares to tip off the season in a couple of weeks. She said she played in Keaney Gym back then so it will be different to be in the Ryan Center: her former team played there last year when she was at Albany but lost the game. She was talking to her dad about it this morning: he said he would not have imagined her becoming coach at her alma mater, but life works in mysterious ways and she is excited to get started.
St. Joe’s coach Steve Donahue was named 2026 A-10 COY despite not having a great 3-PT shooting team, which I assumed was his team’s biggest focus last offseason. He said I was being kind to describe them as “not great”, but that in addition recruiting shooters you need to recruit passers/screeners/high-IQ guys. He returns his 2 best 3-PT shooters in Jaiden Glover-Toscano/Austin Williford and thinks that FR G BJ Ranson will become 1 of the best shooters in the league. At some point last yeat he did not worry about it because they figured out another way to be successful.
St. Joe’s SR G Gabby Casey has seen almost every single 1 of her stats increase during each of her 1st 3 years (PPG/RPG/APG/SPG/3PM), so I was dying to know what she has in store for Year #4. She certainly hopes she can take her game to another level but her main goal is just to help the team be successful.
Loyola Chicago coach Drew Valentine was born/raised in Michigan so it felt appropriate to get his thoughts on the Final 4 returning to Detroit next April. He agreed that it will be interesting and they are doing a good job of building Detroit back up. He went home for a visit last summer and is very excited for his family/friends to watch some good basketball be played in his home state.
You might have heard of Loyola Chicago women’s coach Morgan Paige’s brother Marcus (the only 3-time captain in UNC basketball history), so I pressed her on who is the best coach in the family and whether she will get to see Marcus in person in December when his Charlotte team plays at UIC and/or when her teams plays at Davidson. She claimed that Marcus would say she is the best coach and he calls her “big-time”, but she respects that he is “in the rafters”. She does not know about the Davidson game because she has not checked the 49ers’ conference schedule yet, but she is planning to see him during his game at UIC. They talk about basketball a lot and it is a blessing that they get to share coaching at the highest level because their parents were both coaches: “Basketball is a Paige thing, for sure”!
I believe Richmond SR G Ally Sweeney and her teammate Payton Richard are the only 2 women in the A-10 who have played in the NCAA tourney during each of the past 2 years, so I asked Ally for the secret to winning games in March. She feels it is about paying attention to detail all season long and having everyone’s back. No part of March is easy, but when you have built the chemisty and have the connection, it helps for sure.
La Salle JR G Joanie Quinn is 1 of 5 juniors on the Explorers’ roster so I inquired about how much pressure there is on her to be a leader considering that her team has no seniors. She stated that it has definitely been an adjustment to go from 1 of the youngest kids on the team to 1 of the oldest, but she has settled into that role. She wanted to be a leader this year anyway and her fellow juniors have done a good job of leading the team, so it does not feel like they are lacking seniors.
In VCU’s exhibition win over ODU last weekend the Rams had a 33-7 advantage in bench points, so I asked SR PF Lazar Djokovic how impressed he was with the depth on this year’s roster. He thinks that anyone on the bench can play at any time and on any given day anyone can shine so he is excited for this season.
New VCU women’s coach Chelsea Banbury was hired last March after 7 seasons at High Point and was previously an assistant to current Atlanta Dream coach Karl Smesko at her alma mater (FGCU), so in addition to seeing how the job is going so far I requested a prediction whether her former boss is going to win a a WNBA title next week. She said the job is going good so far even though some of her players are banged up. She is bought into the W for the playoffs more this year than in the past but Karl had better win tonight: fortunately for him, he has won at every place that he has coached.
Fordham SR PF Rikus Schulte has played all over the world during the past 4 years (Germany/North Carolina/California/New York), so I wanted to know how excited he was to finally remain in 1 place for 2 years in a row. He smiled and said he is very excited because he likes the city and the coaching staff: they are like family.
New Fordham women’s coach Neil Harrow was born/raised in Scotland so I was stunned to hear that he went into basketball rather than soccer/golf. He laughed and explained that he went to a very big high school where he knew that he was not good enough to make the soccer team, so he tried out for basketball instead. He later realized that he was not good enough to become a pro basketball player, so he decided to get into coaching and after a few different stops he was hired at Fordham last April.
